The team
Ruth Harrison
Angela Hicken
Madelaine - the book thief
Penny
Rose Ratcliffe
Rachel the editor
Jane the Archivist
Cordelia Gray
Friday Next
Jacky Percival
Other teams
A Daughter of Winchester Find!
A neighbour recently loaned me a book which she thought would interest me because of a local history project I am working on. Actually the book turned out to have nothing at all about my part of Winchester but it was a fascinating read and one which I am really glad to have discovered.A Daughter of Winchester by Jean Crossley is self published and is the memoire of Jean Wilson the daughter of a master at Winchester College. Jean relates the story of her family in the early years of the last century (Jean was born in 1909) and while her canvas is a small one it is beautifully drawn giving a real flavour of what life was like in the rather priviledged surroundings of the public school world.
The book is short and ends when Jean's father,Archie Wilson, dies very suddenly in 1922 of Diphtheria ending the comfortable life of the family in a College House. As I was reading I suddenly had a feeling that I had heard this story before. When her father died jean's mother was pregnant with her 7th child. The epilogue revealed that this seventh child, named Mary is now better known as Baroness Warnock. I realised that sometime ago I had heard a programme on the radio which featured Baroness Warnock speaking about the House she grew up in - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/thehouseigrewupin/pip/0ayop/ which is now the specialist Music School at the local Sixth Form College (Peter Symonds College) and recalled the story of how her father, a Master at Winchester College had died before she was born.
A Daughter of Winchester really captured for me the city of Winchester in the early 1900s and I loved particularly the desciptions of the shops in the High Street and the hotels where dances were held for 'young ladies and gentlemen'. Truly evocative of a time gone forever.
1 December 2009 from Madelaine - the book thief
Finds
- A Daughter of Winchester
- And here is one we missed
- And, finally, one for Hallowe'en
- How did we miss this one?
- John Wyndham's Hampshire connection
- Reading the countryside
- New Milton's new Milton
- Heywood Sumner in South Gorley
- PG Wodehouse in Emsworth
- Walking In My Sleep
- Nicola Slade's Victorian Mysteries
- England's Lost Eden
- June Tate
- Bullington
- Speed The Plough: A Country Song
- A Hampshire scarecrow: Worzel Gummidge
- Queens Arms
- Haslar Hospital Memories
- Magical writing for children
- Inspired by the Tichborne Claimant
- Gypsy Girl Trilogy
- Rev. Gilbert White (1720-1793) and The Natural History of Selborne
- Coffee with Date and Walnut Loaf
- The Play Room
- Kipling's dislikes
- Deadman's Plack
- Netley Abbey Ruins
- Portsea Sagas
- Lilian Harry's Family Connections
- Crossing the Bar
- John Betjeman and Bevis Hillier
- Growing up in Portsmouth
- More Edward Thomas
- Two blokes and a shed
- In the shadow of the Cathedral
- Hampshire Days
- Mr Hardy Writes a Poem
- "Steep" is apt
- Thackeray in Fareham
- Forgotten Favourite?
- Daniel Clay's 'Broken'
- Pell and Tess
- Edward Thomas and Froxfield
- Betjeman explores hidden corners of Hampshire
- Rebecca Smith
- Right of Access
- Hampshire songs, poems, and ditties
- In this house
- Words & Walks
- England, Their England
- An Ode to a Road
- The story of a house
- Crime Connections to the City
- John Keat's Ode to Autumn
- William Lisle Bowles, poet
- Future Princes of Winchester
- Spike Island by Philip Hoare
- The marriage of souls
- Rural Rides: William Cobbett
- Elinor Brent-Dyer remembered
- Dornford Yates' Hampshire connection
- The Marlows, their maker and stealing a corner of Dorset
- Saint Cross: England's Oldest Almshouse
- Winchester the whole day through
- HOW TO BE A BETTER PERSON
- Otterbourne's Enid Blyton? Charlotte M. Yonge (1823-1901)
- Odo's Hanging is missing
- The Warden
- Charles Kingsley's Letters
- Owslebury Bottom
- See it My Way
- Introduction to Melesina Trench
- Some Hampshire road signs read Jane Austen Country
- Flora Thompson: published poet
Recent posts
- Reading Detectives film
- Virginia Smith remembered
- Mary Sumner
- A272: An Ode to a Road (by Andy)
- The hunt continues
- Winchester MP Mark Oaten to publish book
- Chalet School
- Bags of Books and Enthusiasm
- Chalet School author
- Poetry in the pub
- Wealth of words in Winchester
- Hampshire Gets Going
Help the team
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